AFC Fylde hope to ruin their opponents’ Big day out

AFC Fylde boss Dave Challinor is keen to give Biggleswade Town a day to remember in the FA Trophy tomorrow .... for the wrong reasons,

The Southern League Premier Division Central side are two tiers below Challinor’s fifth-placed National League side in the football pyramid.

And with that gulf in mind Challinor says it will be like their cup final.

But the Fylde boss is keen to rain on the parade of the Bedfordshire club, who last weekend won through to the last 16 of the FA Vase.

Challinor said: “I think we had the same sort of scenario in the last round with Stratford (who Fylde overwhelmed four weeks ago).

“They will come here and it will be, I suppose, their cup final. We will treat them exactly like we treated Stratford.

“We are there to a professional job. We will be doing everything we can to make it a day they remember for the wrong reasons.

“We will treat the competition as professionally as we can. We will be strong because our situation means we have to.

“It is a competition we want to progress in. It give us one of the best chances a club at our level has of reaching a Wembley up final.

“We expect them to come here and give everything they have. We know that if we can produce we should be favourites but we know we have to perform.”

Challinor’s side is injury- hit at the moment, with the two week break from league action perfectly timed for the Fylde boss.

Lewis Montrose, Luke Burke and Ryan Croasdale are all likely to sit out tomorrow’s game, while Mason Bloomfield has returned to parent club Norwich after fracturing an arm on his debut in the 3-2 loss at Bromley last Saturday.

Challinor added: “We have said before with this competition that we will gauge it based on where we are at.

“To be honest my team will pretty much be picked for me at the weekend.

“It means we will be strong because we don’t have any other players to pick from!

“But it comes at a good time because if we were going into a league game we would have to be making decisions in midweek.

“With this game we can be a little bit more conservative and give it a few more days to decide on what we do.

“As unlucky as we have been with the injuries, we are pretty lucky that it is an FA Trophy weekend not a massively important league fixture.”

Fylde have one of those the following Saturday, when Wrexham visit Mill Farm for a fifth v fourth clash.

Challinor added: “We are a little bit bare bones for the weekend, and we have a lot of situations that are pretty hazy rather than black and white.

“We are hoping Ryan Croasdale will be back for the Wrexham game but you cannot be 100 per cent certain.

“Lewis has been having issues with his foot and we are not 100 per cent certain what is happening with him.

“We have the Mason situation and “Arthur Gnahoua’s loan from Shrewsbury will expire after Saturday. Again we do not know where we are with that. We have quite a lot of things that are up in the air at the moment.

“The next week or so is a bit uncertain, a bit up and down. We are going to have to make decisions towards the early part of next week before the Wrexham game.”

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